Comments on: A Few Powers of Ten

By: William Summer

William Summer — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 15:36:01 +0000

On Mac OS X, click and save as… It opens in Preview as a frame by frame sequence. (will need to view as actual size to avoid distortion.)

By: Marshall Eubanks

Marshall Eubanks — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 04:00:48 +0000

Escape does’t work on Mac OS X Safari. Transcoding (Quicktime 7) works like a charm.

By: ampire

ampire — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 11:51:33 +0000

Not entirely sure about the source either but it might be from James Tyrwhitt-Drake at the University of Victoria’s Advanced Microscopy Facility (http://www.stehm.uvic.ca/). Some more images: http://bit.ly/PNAoSn

By: Doron

Doron — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 08:18:41 +0000

Sean,
Bacteria in and on the human body are not only here for the fun of it, and we are not only the bus. Bacteria are. fundamentally important to our existence, and ,to a great extent, even control our evolution! (not mentioning behaviour). The most amazing relation to me is that of the composition of human breast milk. About 20% of the sugars in breast milk, are non digestible by any human (or infants). It is of the use of specific species of bacteria of the genus Bifidobacterium. You may ask yourself why did the human breast milk evolve to give nutrients to a bacteria? the answer here is fairly easy- the infant is born without any gut flora, and a suppressed immune system. Thus, feeding this bacteria, is of great importance- it colonizes the gut, protecting the infant of any infections! There is also strong evidence the bacteria are important to mammals (and humans of course) through the whole digestion process. If you look enough you may find more and more examples if microbes affecting humans…..
So no, we are not the bus, they are not here for fun, some of them are here to help us (as we help them), other are here to harm us, few of them are freeloaders.

By: Mark Schnitzius

Mark Schnitzius — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 04:51:17 +0000

This bit of doggerel seems appropriate:

“So nat’ralists observe, a flea
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey,
And these have smaller fleas that bite ‘em,
And so proceed ad infinitum.”

(Jonathan Swift)

By: Z

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 20:50:42 +0000

Sean, this visualization is also pretty good although it’s a cartoon rather than a SEM image: http://htwins.net/scale2/

(warning, requires flash)

By: Sili

Sili — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 20:11:43 +0000

Isn’t there a poem about gnats with yet smaller gnats on them?

By: Ahcuah

Ahcuah — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 19:34:43 +0000

To stop the gif, hit the escape key .

By: Trevor

Trevor — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 18:39:01 +0000

The bacteria aren’t just passengers on the bus; they help pick the route!
http://www.economist.com/node/21560523

By: Andrew Munn

Andrew Munn — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 18:38:25 +0000

Here’s an “exploded” version of the fig http://gif-explode.com/http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/files/2012/08/tumblr_m951n679Pw1qbh26io1_400.gif